On 30 January 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a pilot judgment in the case of Cannavacciuolo and Others v. Italy (application no. 51767/14 and others), concerning the environmental pollution situation that has affected the area between the provinces of Naples and Caserta known as the "Land of Fires". The ECtHR found that Italy had violated Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and requested Italian authorities to implement appropriate environmental rehabilitation measures in the affected territories. The Court reserves the right to verify the impact of these measures two years from the publication of the judgment.

The waste crisis in Campania and the Land of Fires phenomenon

The Cannavacciuolo and Others v. Italy case originates from a series of applications submitted between 2014 and 2015 by 34 individuals residing in 90 Campanian municipalities. Three Italian government decrees, issued between 2013 and 2015, classified these areas as exposed to risks associated with the illegal dumping, burial, and burning of waste in the area known as the "Land of Fires". Approximately three million people live in this territory.

The ECtHR judgment is over 170 pages long. It follows some previous rulings that addressed similar issues, particularly the Di Sarno and Others v. Italy judgment (application no. 39765/08) of 2012, which dealt with the waste emergency in Campania between 1994 and 2009 related to the inability to manage urban waste collection and storage. In that case, the ECtHR found that Italy had violated Article 8 of the ECHR (right to private and family life) due to the discomfort and health risks for residents related to the waste emergency. The Locascia and Others v. Italy case (application no. 35648/10), decided in 2023, had a similar subject and outcome. The supervision of the execution of both judgments by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is still ongoing (in 2025, a meeting on this matter is scheduled for March to examine the Italian government's updated document. Also relevant is the Cordella and Others v. Italy case (applications no. 54414/13 and no. 54264/15, judgment of 24 January 2019), which deals with pollution related to the former Ilva steel plant in Taranto. Supervision of this and some other similar cases concerning pollution caused by Ilva is still ongoing.

The Di Sarno case did not address the specific issue of pollution related to illegal landfills and waste treatment, but only the shortcomings of public administration in managing urban waste in the region, particularly in the regional capital, Naples. The Cannavacciuolo judgment is, therefore, highly significant because it concerns a separate and particularly serious and disturbing aspect of the environmental emergency affecting Campania.

The facts: 40 years of illegal dumping, burying, and burning of hazardous waste

The first part of the judgment provides a careful and accurate reconstruction of the events that have led over the years, and particularly since 2013, to discover and counter the complex situation known as the "Land of Fires". In particular, in 2013, Parliament declassified the statements of a "justice collaborator" who, in 1997, disclosed information about illegal waste trafficking and hazardous materials that had been buried and burned in the area since the 1980s (in fact, the first parliamentary commission of inquiry into the phenomenon of illegal toxic waste trafficking to Campania was established in 1996). In the same 2013, a decree-law introduced urgent and extraordinary measures to protect the health of inhabitants and decontaminate the soil and water of the vast area affected by the phenomenon.

The applicants allege a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR, with reference to the health risk to which they have been exposed since at least the 1990s, and Article 2 of the ECHR (right to life). They allege a causal link between soil, water, and air pollution and the increase in mortality due to certain pathologies, including various forms of cancer, observed among the population of the affected territories.

Admissibility: associations and late applicants excluded from the case

The Court, discussing the admissibility of applications lodged by direct or indirect victims of the alleged violation of Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR, decides to exclude from the case, as lacking victim status, some associations representing inhabitants of Campania. The complaints of individual applicants are, however, admissible. The ECtHR finds that there are no available remedies in the Italian legal system to obtain from the state the adoption of measures to prevent pollution and contain the consequences of ongoing contamination. The only remedy the Italian legal system provides is an action for damages, which does not represent an effective remedy in situations such as the one in question. However, only applications filed within the first months of 2014 are admissible. Article 35 of the ECHR provides that applications to the ECtHR must be submitted within a six-month time limit (reduced to four months since 2022), which, according to the ECtHR, starts running in this case from December 2013, identified as the moment from which the emergency became universally and officially known.

In the Land of Fires, the right to life of inhabitants has been violated

Coming to the merits of the case, the ECtHR, after summarising the position of the applicants, the state, and various third parties who intervened with their own observations, essentially in support of the applicants, focuses on the applicability of Article 2 of the ECHR. Protecting the right to life implies that the state takes all appropriate positive measures to intervene in cases where there is a real and imminent risk to the life of persons subject to its jurisdiction, particularly concerning inherently dangerous activities - such as waste treatment. The case in question refers to activities that have endangered not a limited number of people in relation to a circumscribed situation, but millions of individuals and for decades. Moreover, the facts do not concern the dangerous consequences of a regulated activity, but the effects of illegal actions carried out by criminal organisations. The state does not contest the serious pathological consequences, including fatal ones, of exposure to dioxin, heavy metals, and other pollutants present in the environment of the territory in question, merely contesting their relevance in relation to certain applicants. Accordingly, the ECtHR, also in light of the precautionary principle, considers that there is a sufficiently serious, genuine, and ascertainable risk to life and that this risk is imminent for anyone residing in the 90 municipalities identified from 2013 onwards. Article 2 of the ECHR is therefore applicable. The question is whether Italy has acted adequately to mitigate the risk. 

Slow decontamination, inadequate criminal sanctions, insufficient screening, lack of information

The analysis is conducted along multiple lines. First, the ECtHR assesses whether the state has effectively identified the health risks to citizens. While actions to map the areas exposed to risk and screen the population have been adopted since 2013, the ECtHR declares itself surprised by the lack of initiatives in this regard during the approximately twenty previous years in which the phenomenon had been reported in various scientific, institutional, and judicial fora. From 2013 to the present day, moreover, the mapping and testing of the soil, water, and air in the Land of Fires is still partial and concerns only agricultural areas, while new toxic waste dumps continue to be discovered, as demonstrated by reports from 2021. 

Secondly, the ECtHR assesses the effectiveness of the decontamination measures adopted since 2013. It concludes that they have been incomplete and, in many cases, still in the preliminary stage. 

A third aspect concerns epidemiological research to determine the link between pollution and the onset of lethal pathologies in the population. While progress has been made since 2012, the documentation that the ECtHR examined shows that research was below the standard of diligence required by the circumstances until 2016. 

The state should also have monitored and repressed the illegal conduct that is at the root of the Land of Fires phenomenon. Regarding monitoring, the state has taken significant and effective measures, including establishing a special "delegated official for the phenomenon of waste burning in the Campania Region”, but only since 2012. In terms of criminal repression, the ECtHR notes that adequate criminal legislation to counter toxic waste trafficking and its illegal disposal was only introduced from 2015, which inserted articles 452-bis to 452-terdecies in the penal code: until then, Italian criminal legislation was fragmented and not sufficiently integrated into the general legal framework. Even the information provided by the state on investigations and trials carried out for the most serious environmental crimes related to the Land of Fires (the state mentioned seven) did not show a particular effectiveness of the judicial instrument. Some trials have been closed due to the statute of limitations; convictions so far amount to three.

The ECtHR, while reiterating the different contexts in which the waste emergency that affected Campania between 1994 and 2009 and the Land of Fires phenomenon are situated, does not exclude a link between the two issues, recognising that the poor management of waste collection and treatment by institutions may have favoured the intruding of organised crime in this business. On the other hand, however, the ECtHR observes that even on the first front, Italy cannot be said to have wholly overcome the crisis since the execution supervision of the Di Sarno judgment is still open and only in 2019 did Italy finish paying the fine of 120,000 euros per day imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) at the end of the infringement procedure initiated for non-compliance with the EU waste directive (judgment C-297/08).

Finally, the ECtHR considers inadequate the information provided on the Land of Fires phenomenon by Italian authorities to the public. Although epidemiological data and other scientific studies were made public in a timely manner, there was a lack of an adequate strategy to inform the population about such a serious problem that simultaneously affected soil, water, and air quality. Particularly worrying is the fact that the statement of a justice collaborator from the Camorra who denounced the spread of criminal environmental pollution practices since the 1980s was covered by state secrecy for fifteen years.

In conclusion, the ECtHR declares that the link between the Land of Fires phenomenon and the violation or risk of violation of the applicant's right to life enshrined in Article 2 of the ECHR can be considered proven and that, therefore, Italy has violated Article 2 of the ECHR. This conclusion makes it unnecessary to investigate the possible violation of Article 8 of the ECHR regarding the failure to protect the applicants' right to health and well-being.

A pilot case: two years to comply with the Court’s general measures

An important aspect of the Cannavacciuolo judgment is that the ECtHR has decided to attribute it to the character of a pilot judgment. The ECtHR has considered that the decades-long duration of the described situation of violation of Article 2 of the ECHR, which the state has countered in a slow and incomplete manner, combined with the fact that there are 72 pending applications concerning the same issue, of which 36 involve over 4,700 citizens, justifies the adoption of such a procedure. 

Consequently, the Italian state must prepare an overall strategy, to be defined in collaboration with the Campania Region, local authorities, and civil society, to map the phenomenon and proceed with the decontamination of at-risk sites. The state must also establish an independent mechanism to monitor the progress of the adopted strategy and measure its impact. Finally, the state must create an accessible and updated information platform. These general measures must be adopted and operationalised within two years, thus by 2027. In the meantime, all pending applications relating to the Land of Fires situation remain suspended and will be reviewed in 2027. Also, in 2027, the claims for just satisfaction submitted by some applicants will be considered with a further judgment.